


The Scent of Home

by inexplicifics



Series: Sugar and Spice Bingo [6]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Reunions, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29347896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Aiden doesn't know where he is, who he is, or why everything hurts so much.But he knows that scent, and he'll follow it, whatever the cost.
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher)
Series: Sugar and Spice Bingo [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096091
Comments: 33
Kudos: 607
Collections: Sugar and Spice Witcher Bingo





	The Scent of Home

He isn’t sure where he is, or how he got there, or, for that matter, _who_ he is. He hurts _everywhere_ \- even his _hair_ hurts, somehow. He can’t see out of one eye - he’s honestly not sure he even still _has_ that eye - and there’s something wrong with the other one, so everything is hazy shapes and the vague impression of movement.

But there’s a scent.

He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s the best smell in the world. Objectively, it’s not a great smell - leather and sweat and metal, and something bitter he can’t identify - but it draws him like nothing else does. He follows the scent, stumbling and desperate.

It fades sometimes, and then he goes on blindly in the hopes that it will return. It grows stronger sometimes, and he follows it at a shambling run.

He finds food - well, he finds things to eat, anyhow, things his nose tells him are edible, even if only barely - and he drinks when he crosses streams or when the rain falls and he can tilt his head back and let the drops fall into his open mouth. He heals - he thinks he heals, at least. He stops hurting as much, at any rate, though that might just be him getting used to the pain. His good eye starts to clear, a little; he starts to be able to make out colors instead of muddy shapes, starts to see crisper edges to trees and walls and people. His head stops aching quite as much, though he doesn’t regain any of his memories. He’s fairly sure he _should_ have memories, reasonably sure most people do not go through their lives half-blind and nameless and baffled, but he has no idea how to wake them if they are lurking deep in his battered mind.

After a while - he isn’t sure how long; he sleeps when he can’t go any further, and goes on regardless of how dark or light the sky may be - it starts to get colder, but the scent gets stronger. _Much_ stronger. He starts picking up other notes beneath the leather and sweat and metal: coppery blood and something sickly sweet that makes him think of rot. He starts to worry.

He moves faster.

It gets colder, and the ground beneath his feet gets stonier, and the wind bites at the tips of his ears and his nose like it wants to snap them off. But the scent is stronger with every passing day, drawing him onward like he’s been hooked on an unbreakable line. His good eye has cleared enough that he can see the trees like black ink drawings sketched on the grey, cloudy sky; something in his instincts tells him this is bad, this is dangerous, but he cannot turn around, cannot go _away_ from the scent.

He’s exhausted, and he’s fairly sure if he doesn’t stop soon he will just collapse, but the scent is so _near_. He runs on, through the short twilight and into the starless darkness of the cloudy night, stumbling over rocks and fallen branches, following his nose desperately off the rutted road and into the forest. He almost hits a dozen trees, saved time and again by some sixth sense he doesn’t even know how to control.

There’s a flickering light ahead - a fire, small and well-hidden, but he’s close enough to spot it now. And near the fire, a dark shape, seated. He stumbles to a halt at the edge of the ring of firelight, and the dark shape rises, drawing a long shining blade.

“Who’s there?”

“I don’t know,” he says, which probably isn’t the right answer but makes the dark shape - the person, silhouetted against the fire now - hesitate.

The person is where the scent is coming from. He steps forward, just a little, into the firelight.

The person drops their sword and lunges forward - not an attack, he realizes after a moment, but an embrace, so fierce and fervent that it could almost be an assault in its own right. He is surrounded utterly by that perfect, wonderful scent - the scent that means _safety_ , that means _home._

“ _Aiden_ ,” the man hugging him gasps.

Oh. His name is Aiden.

And the man who smells so damn good is - “Lambert,” he rasps, and Lambert makes a hoarse sound and clutches him tighter. Aiden clings back, closing his eyes against the onslaught of memories that being in Lambert’s arms brings on: this is familiar, they have stood like this before, after meeting again - in the spring, after a winter apart - meeting to go out on the Path together again, hunting side by side - or just before parting every autumn, Lambert to go north and Aiden south - south to Novigrad, to an ambush and a long fall and the river waiting below -

“I killed an entire band of assassins for you,” Lambert says. “Well. Geralt helped.”

“Thanks,” Aiden says, finding a rusty chuckle somewhere. “You smell like shit, pup.” Lambert smells like old blood and too many potions, like not enough baths and too many sleepless nights. He smells amazing.

“You’re no bouquet of roses yourself, kitten,” Lambert says, pulling back just far enough to meet Aiden’s one remaining eye. “Fuck. I thought you were dead. You’re coming with me to Kaer Morhen.”

“No arguments here,” Aiden says. “I followed you halfway across the continent. What’s up a mountain or two?”

“Crazy Cat,” Lambert grumbles, pulling Aiden down beside the fire and curling around him. “Not letting you out of my sight again.”

That sounds about perfect, Aiden decides, and falls asleep with his head in Lambert’s lap, surrounded by the scent he’d follow out of death itself.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sugar & Spice Bingo, and beta'd by the delightful RoS13!


End file.
